20,000 kids missing from DCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Headline is a little misleading. Last year, they had 89k enrolled by this point. This year they have 77k. So, the difference is closer to 12k.

If this board is any indication, these kids are out of school; they just moved to the suburbs/went private/are being home schooled.

I thought it was interesting that they said the under enrollment does not significantly vary by ward.

Yes, and of the 12,000, how much of this is parents who enrolled but didn't finish the paperwork? There aren't 12,000 missing students and the Wash Post/Perry Stein should be clearer on which portion are really kids who aren't in school or kids who are just missing a part of their paperwork since DC requires re-enrollment and proving residency every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My aunt works for a poor county in Maryland. 1/3 of elementary students received no instruction in the spring. This isn’t surprising and is a national emergency. People don’t care because it’s immigrants and POC.

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My aunt works for a poor county in Maryland. 1/3 of elementary students received no instruction in the spring. This isn’t surprising and is a national emergency. People don’t care because it’s immigrants and POC.

This

Prior generations of immigrants would have made darn sure there kids were the first to register for school. I know this from personal experience. If you want to live the American dream you have to lean into it. This is on them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montgomery County has lower enrollment as well. The solution to the disease is probably not to "open school". It is to have leadership in our country who will LEAD. We still do not have a national plan for reopening schools, businesses, etc. I agree that schools should be open, but instead of our nation planning for the Fall 2020 reopening back in the Spring, people spent time arguing over whether or not to wear a mask. So, the issue here is not to open schools. Anybody can do that. The issue is opening schools and keeping them open. Where is the plan for that? Schools not being open is a symptom of a larger problem that our nation faces.

Hardly anyone in DC has coronavirus. This is all for nothing.

Just because you do not know any parent of a student who has died of coronavirus in DC - does not mean it has not occurred.
A parents of my children's classmates died from COVID. It hit poorer communities a lot harder than those with the option of working from home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suspect a lot of these kids are never coming back, even when schools reopen. Once they get in the habit of not attending school, that habit is going to be hard to break.

People are going to be dealing with the fallout from closing schools for so long for years. We are sacrificing the future of so many children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Headline is a little misleading. Last year, they had 89k enrolled by this point. This year they have 77k. So, the difference is closer to 12k.

If this board is any indication, these kids are out of school; they just moved to the suburbs/went private/are being home schooled.

I thought it was interesting that they said the under enrollment does not significantly vary by ward.

Yes, and of the 12,000, how much of this is parents who enrolled but didn't finish the paperwork? There aren't 12,000 missing students and the Wash Post/Perry Stein should be clearer on which portion are really kids who aren't in school or kids who are just missing a part of their paperwork since DC requires re-enrollment and proving residency every year.

Geez, simplify the registration process for families without Internet access, devices and tech savvy. Aggressively reach out to these families, DCPS, DCPCS and OSSE. Right now.

[Anonymous]

Our school district of about 50,000 kids had their entire system crash during the summer. Parents weren't allowed to enroll in person either due to safety reasons. When the system was back up, a lot of the links were dead links and people just gave up because trying to reach tech support could take hours. In the 2 weeks we have been DL, 4 days have been missed due to neighborhood power outages (there's constant work being done on power lines due to old trees), zoom outages, slow internet from inside the school buildings, etc. Distance learning doesn't work because technology hasn't caught up yet to make it work.

The district is now sending out notices begging people to enroll because classes that had 25 kids in them normally now only have 14 and are dwindling by the day as parents find alternate arrangements for their kids in wealthy districts. In poor districts, many of the parents have just given up. The district won't release any numbers in terms of attendance. We transferred to a private school 2 days into DL and haven't logged onto a single zoom session and our public school teacher marks my kid present if I send one photo of work he's done during the day. They just released alternate schedules for K-2 cutting the school day by 1 hour and introducing more 15 minute breaks (youtube videos). It's just a giant mess. But they're playing it up on social media like "great success! DL is going sooo well!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Remember relisha Rudd. Remember the case of the 4 kids whose Mentally ill mom killed them. School also is a social service, a way to track these kids and hopefully keep them safe, alive. I’m a dem but I believe schools must open.

This is a good point. Cases of serious child abuse have skyrocketed in the ER. These are kids that could have been helped with intervention by teachers and school counselors but now they're slipping through the cracks until it's too late.

[Anonymous]

I guess we know why the city is putting so little effort into taking attendance

[Anonymous]

Thanks teachers union!

[Anonymous]

It is a little surreal to read all these posts acting like 20,000 kids missing from school is no big deal. And how many more are registered and never bother with distance learning?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is a little surreal to read all these posts acting like 20,000 kids missing from school is no big deal. And how many more are registered and never bother with distance learning?

Hey, the teachers got what they want, that's all that matters to Bowser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Remember relisha Rudd. Remember the case of the 4 kids whose Mentally ill mom killed them. School also is a social service, a way to track these kids and hopefully keep them safe, alive. I’m a dem but I believe schools must open.

This is a good point. Cases of serious child abuse have skyrocketed in the ER. These are kids that could have been helped with intervention by teachers and school counselors but now they're slipping through the cracks until it's too late.

Yes, that is a huge problem. However, it is a sliver of the issue related to DCPS's formal registration paperwork being down across all wards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is a little surreal to read all these posts acting like 20,000 kids missing from school is no big deal. And how many more are registered and never bother with distance learning?

There are not 20,000 kids "missing from school" -- that is the point people are making. Another click bait headline making you jump to a conclusion that isn't in the article, if you bothered to read it, and isn't the reality, if the reporter had bothered to complete the research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are kids in my block who are going back to their home country (Guatemala). The single parent does not speak English. They live in one bedroom of a rowhouse. I’m sure he hasn’t re-enrolled them bc their plan is to go back home. But the date they are leaving keeps shifting. I worry about those kids and others like them. What will become of them?

Why are they not leaving? No flights?